Socket 939 is viable option, but Nforce chipset is not recommended for various reasons.

Welcome! IMHO your current build is already good enough for most Win98 games; heck, my very first WinXP build 19 years ago had the same CPU and HDD, similar MB (Asus A7N8X Deluxe), slightly better video (GeForce4 Ti 4200) but slower 512MB DDR-333 (PC2700) RAM.

Currently I've got two Win98 builds: the higher end one has Asus K8V-MX (Socket 754), Sempron 3100+, 512MB DDR-400 (PC3200), and Radeon 9600 Pro (Gigabyte GV-R96P256D); the lower end one has Gigabyte GA-6VXC7-4X-P (Socket 370 with one ISA slot), Pentium III 800EB, 256MB PC133 SDRAM, and Radeon 9000 Pro (Gigabyte GV-R9000 Pro II). Both are quite stable and can play just about any DX7 or DX8 game (I leave DX9 games to my WinXP build).

Sure, I'd be very happy to own a high-end Socket 939 MB with Athlon 64 FX-57 plus a Radeon 9800 XT, but working ones are very rare and expensive nowadays, and those were not designed for Win98 anyway.

I'd say it's a preference of what you DON'T want instead: Personally I'd avoid NetBurst architecture (Intel's failed attempt causing high power consumption; this excludes all Socket 478 and some early LGA775 CPUs), GeForce FX (similar reason to NetBurst), DDR2, Socket AM2, or PCIe graphics (too new and designed for WinXP in mind; difficult to find suitable Win98 drivers for the latter two) for a Win98 build. Lots of folks here have much earlier Slot 1 builds and run Win98 games happily.

The FX5950U (AGP) or PCX5900 (PCIe) are probably going to be the best for 98SE if you want stuff like palleted textures for certain games.

With 3D Mark 2001, the FX5950U is CPU limited up to about 3.2-3.3Ghz on an Intel Core 2 Extreme x6800.

Even the highest end S939 is not going to be able to match that speed.

That being said, pretty much all games meant for Windows 9x will run perfectly fine on a S939 setup.

With 3D Mark 2001, the FX5950U is CPU limited up to about 3.2-3.3Ghz on an Intel Core 2 Extreme x6800.

On 1024x768 resolution and no quality settings.

cyclone3d wrote on 2022-03-13, 22:29:

With 3D Mark 2001, the FX5950U is CPU limited up to about 3.2-3.3Ghz on an Intel Core 2 Extreme x6800.

Even the highest end S939 is not going to be able to match that speed.

You'd need very specific MB to utilize such combination; namely, boards with socket 775 + AGP 3.0 + DDR + chipset supporting Win9x such as 865 as 9xx stopped Win9x support, e.g. 775i65G R3.0 or ConRoe865PE. Those were probably the only MB that could be used on a very large time gap from Win98 (with RAM limitation patch) to Win7, but they don't appear on used markets easily or cheaply.

I wouldn't recommend 754 . .it was pretty much the budget board for that era, the 939 boards were much better and had better support.
(This is not to say 754 was horrible, just that if you have the option of 939 then thats always going to be better)

and had better support

Socket 754 chipsets were repurposed for Socket 939 AGP 🤣

Firstly, I want to thank you all for welcoming me and for the responses. It is great to be around here.

Secondly, I gave it a thought and decided to stick with either Socket 462 or Socket 939 for an overkill Win98 build, hopefully without too many headaches.

Thing is, Socket 939 comes mostly with PCIe which I try to avoid for Win98 and there is only a single 939 Motherboard with AGP on the local marketplace: Gigabyte GA-K8NSC-939 but the seller wants 70 EUR which is exactly the price the board retailed for as new which is kind of unjustified I think. Also, the board comes with Dual Channel DDR 400 and the nForce 3 Chipset which I really don't know how it will run together with Windows 98SE.

Is the board actually worth that much ? In case it isn't and I don't find another one with AGP these days, I will probably have to build another higher end Socket 462 rig and risk dealing with the infamous 5V Power Draw problems and the possibility of getting bad capacitors in the future even though I luckily never had a board with bad caps. We'll see.

Thanks again for the input !

Like I said before - avoid Nforce chipsets for Win9x. Stick to Uli or VIA.

I'm not entirely sure what the problems with nForce 1/2/3 and Win9x are but I've had decent luck with them. The issues that I've had are with USB 2.0, which is often troublesome with other chipsets too, and with the native SATA controllers as Win9x doesn't understand them. So I usually disable USB 2.0 and use PATA. And since it's Win9x you should use at most 512MB RAM unless you feel like messing with patching the OS to work stably with more.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-03-14, 12:17:

and had better support

Socket 754 chipsets were repurposed for Socket 939 AGP 🤣

not that type of support 🤣

If you do not care about DOS then it doesn't matter if you choose Socket A or 754/939. Your rig in signature is excellent for this purpose, only graphics card needs upgrading. I would start there and see how things improve. I would also consider slower Barton 2500-2600+ if you're still not happy. Those will be very cheap.

Socket 754/939 with AGP is for someone who wants a single rig for Windows 98 and Windows XP. It isn't fast enough for late Windows XP games though, but those should work on the latest Windows anyway.

Depends what you stick in your sockets and GPU slots really, get core speeds up to near 3Ghz and late GPUs and you're alright for later XP, but backward compatibility with the GPU will suck. Though on 754 you require an abnormally good motherboard, abnormally good CPU, abnormally good cooling etc, just to get where you can with a curbfind core2 rig, so not exactly time, money and patience efficient.

Hi there,

if you're going to play the sacred classics like DOOM, then I like to think the rig should have a real power switch - It's the romantic in me.
Meaning, an AT system, socket 7 most likely, or something really rare of a later platform.

It has been done, some cracks here will know how to, but to build a "one size fits all" system only makes sense for the fun of it.
Look at "Phil's computer lab" on youtube for several videos on building a DOS/9x system with rather recent, read: inexpensive parts.

But, e.g., Halo for Windows was released in 2003 - that was already very much the twilight of Win98. So, don't expect the drivers and such for contemporary gear to be a walk in the park. AFAIK, '98 will support only 512 MB of RAM.

Possible rule of thumb: If the motherboard has no ISA slot any more, it's probably not meant for DOS games by the gods of hardware.
And that rule extends to Win 9x which only ever was a glorified DOS shell.

If you need something more powerful for certain games, you should be fine with XP.

Just my two cents. Have fun!

why isn't nForce3 an option? k8n neo2 platinum + a64 4000+ san diego could be an option

I'd stick with the system you have and just get a Geforce4 (not MX!) for it. Unless you're just dying to run everything in sync...

GokuSS4 wrote on 2022-03-16, 15:32:

why isn't nForce3 an option? k8n neo2 platinum + a64 4000+ san diego could be an option

Indeed, I have the Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra-939 (based on the nForce 3 Ultra chipset) with a San Diego 4000+, and it's as solid as it gets for Windows 98. And did I mention that it's blazing fast too? (I know, shocker! 😀 )

However, I do agree that a board with a VIA chipset (like the K8T800) is generally a much better option, simply because of the very good compatibility with everything, including DOS (you can generally forget about playing DOS games with sound when using a motherboard based on the nForce chipset - there are apparently some partial success stories, but they're very rare).

Having said that, for those who want a very flexible platform, my vote will always go to a build based on Athlon XP "Thoroughbred" (you don't even need one of the faster models, something like a 1700+ will work great), running on a VIA KT600/KT880 motherboard, like the Asus A7V600-X or Asus A7V880. Add a GeForce 4 Ti (or even an MX460), a SB Live 5.1 / Aureal Vortex 2 sound card for Win98 and a secondary Yamaha YMF724 for DOS, and you've got yourself a build that can play 98% of all games released between 1982 - 2001. The only downside is that you will need to find a power supply with beefier 5V & 3.3V rails, but since the OP is from the same country as me, I know for a fact that this is not that difficult to do. 😀

Greetings and thank You for the awesome replies guys ! The different opinions sure helped a lot !

After a couple of days of doing some more research and FINALLY deciding on something, I pulled the trigger on the GIGABYTE 7VT600P-RZ. It got support for 400 MHz FSB which I need for upgrading to a 3200+ Barton in the future and SATA Ports which I hopefully will be able to make them work because I got an 80 GB SATA 1 Maxtor DiamondMax 10 that I want to put in ( so no problems regarding SATA 2 with the VIA KT600 and VT8237 Chipsets haha ). If it doesn't work, I got my trusty IDE WD right beside me in case things go funky. I still need to decide on a case, but that's subjective of course AND the final piece left: the AGP card. My 9600 SE is only 64 bit and even if the games I play work alright, I want to go Full Performance mode and get something that will be able to play most of the games I want at a good framerate without huge dips in FPS like the 9600SE does. Given the fact that the local market availability for AGPs in my country is absolutely grotesque, I will need to stick to either an FX 5500 128 / 256 MB - 128 bit OR a Radeon 9600XT with solid caps all around, active cooling and all that. As far as I have looked into, the 9600XT should provide sufficient power for what I need, given its Benchmark score of over 10.000 in 3DMark2001 SE. I know it ain't the best Benchmark for testing GPU capabilities since it is more CPU dependent than GPU, but it gives me an idea of what the card can do. What do you guys think would be the more appropriate card ? After looking at some benchmarks / comparisons, I think the 9600XT beats the FX5500.

So the idea of this "high performing" rig is to be able to play most of the Win98 era games on high details while retaining full FPS without instabilities and dips all around. As far as compatibility goes, the drivers available as well as the hardware itself should work fine with each other being right at the twilight zone of late Win98 and early Windows XP, without entering the XP zone.

Regarding the PSU 5V Rail thing going on with Socket A, I luckily got a couple of old power supplies with 30A+ rating lying around, so I can use those. Thanks for pointing that out again @bloodem. Greetings from your neighbor 😁

bootsec7or wrote on 2022-03-17, 11:06:

What do you guys think would be the more appropriate card ? After looking at some benchmarks / comparisons, I think the 9600XT beats the FX5500.

So the idea of this "high performing" rig is to be able to play most of the Win98 era games on high details while retaining full FPS without instabilities and dips all around. As far as compatibility goes, the drivers available as well as the hardware itself should work fine with each other being right at the twilight zone of late Win98 and early Windows XP, without entering the XP zone.

The answer to this question is more complicated than you think. 😁
It depends greatly on the actual games you want to play (and the resolution).
For example, the Radeon cards do not support table fog / 8-bit paletted textures. This is not an issue for me, but it might be for you.
Furthermore, you still haven't told us if DOS games interest you in any way. Radeon cards are also known to have some scrolling issues with certain games like Commander Keen (again, not a problem for me - all DOS games that I play work perfectly fine with Radeon cards).
If your sole focus is Windows 98 gaming (without taking into account those very late games that were actually meant for WinXP) and you're looking for the best compatibility, a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 is all you need. For even more compatibility, you can add a Voodoo 2 at some point (it will be quite expensive, though), and this will allow you to basically play any game for Win95/98 (and even most of the early DOS Glide games will work just fine with the right patches).

bootsec7or wrote on 2022-03-17, 11:06:

Regarding the PSU 5V Rail thing going on with Socket A, I luckily got a couple of old power supplies with 30A+ rating lying around, so I can use those. Thanks for pointing that out again @bloodem. Greetings from your neighbor 😁

You're welcome, greetings from Brasov! 😀